12 grants

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Why is this important?

The NAB Foundation (previously known as the MLC Community Foundation) is a private charitable trust and our vision is to support greater social innovation in how societal challenges are tackled. By providing financial grants and other valuable in-kind support, we see ourselves as an ‘enabler’ - enabling for-purpose organisations to incubate and scale new, innovative and sustainable ways of solving problems.

Our grants program offers long-term grants (up to three years) in areas important to NAB customers and the wider Australian community aligned to NAB’s social impact focus areas. To date these have been in the areas of mental health, domestic and family violence, financial resilience and environmental wellbeing.

We take a long-term, collaborative approach to our partnerships and want to make a positive and lasting impact on the organisations that we partner with. Beyond grants, we also provide valuable in-kind support such as communications advice, business mentoring, capacity building and access to the skills and resources of the wider NAB Group. Measuring outcomes is also a priority for us - we want to work with organisations that seek to measure their outcomes and understand how they’re making a difference and we can support organisations on that journey.

Beyond our grant making program, we also engage in impact investment as one way of unlocking additional capital from the Trust to help solve social problems and thereby increase our impact. We look for impact investment opportunities that deliver both a financial return and positive social outcomes. The impact investment market is an evolving one and we believe this is an innovative way to support financially sustainable initiatives that address social issues.

About our grant program

With key focus on fostering social innovation, the impact areas at the heart of the grant program are domestic and family violence, financial resilience and environmental wellbeing;

Domestic and family violence can affect anyone and is one of the most common forms of violence against women and children in Australia. The Domestic and Family Violence Support Grant aims to support work in prevention, early intervention and improvement in support to victims. Further information on NAB’s Domestic and Family Violence work can be found on our ‘Domestic and Family Violence Support’ webpage.

Financial shocks are unexpected expenses and drops in income, and for Australians they are all too common, with around two in three Australians experiencing some financial hardship during their life. In an effort to direct technology, innovation, and talent toward addressing this important issue, the Financial Shocks Support Grant seeks to support innovators who are helping Australians prepare for and weather the financial shocks that all of us experience in life.

Regional communities are dependent on the good management and preservation of the natural resources they rely on. Through the Environmental Wellbeing Sustainable Regions Grant we aim to support regional communities to better manage their natural resources and promote biodiversity in the face of challenges such as declining access to water, water quality, land degradation and climate change and work on solutions to some of these complex issues.

We have two grant types within each category:

Thrive grants - for organisations with proven models or solutions, these grants help initiatives or organisations to become sustainable, to scale or collaborate and move to their next stage of growth;

Seed grants - for early stage initiatives or organisations, these grants are ‘seed’ funding for building, testing or piloting an innovative idea, or for funding core operations and organisational capacity.

Our first grant round, announced in July 2017, is supporting six organisations committed to addressing domestic and family violence and building financial resilience in our communities. Our second grant round, Environmental Wellbeing Sustainable Regions, announced in February 2018, is supporting six organisations who are working on new, regional solutions to current environmental challenges.

Family and Domestic Violence

Luke Batty Foundation

The Luke Batty Foundation was established by Rosie Batty in memory of her son Luke who was murdered by his father in 2014. Their vision is that all Australians are engaged in ending domestic and family violence. Informed by the voices of women and children, their purpose is to deepen an understanding of domestic and family violence; to drive and affect attitudinal, cultural and systemic change.

Rosie’s name has become synonymous with her advocacy for victims; putting domestic violence on the national agenda with her informative insight and actions following her personal tragedy. As CEO of the Foundation, Rosie is a leader in the national debate on family violence; raising awareness, and supporting organisations and individuals across the country. The NAB Foundation’s thrive grant, will support the Luke Batty Foundation’s Ambassador Program, to help bring to light domestic violence in our communities.

Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation

Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation exists to fund ground-breaking research and everyday clinical care at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick. Their vision is to ensure that every child now and in the future can access world-class medical care whenever they need it. They fund the vital clinical care that these children need now, so they have the best possible treatment and hospital experience and they also invest in research that will change and save more lives in the future.

Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick has introduced a new model of care in its Child Protection Unit that aims to promote safety, reduce the impact of harm and improve the well-being of children and young people, in the hope of decreasing intergenerational violence and domestic abuse. The NAB Foundation’s thrive grant will support the Interdisciplinary Reparative Project (IRP) at the Child Protection Unit. This is a world-first, that supports recovery from complex childhood trauma through a new relational model that combines counselling therapy with parents and the intervention of an Occupational Therapist working with both parent and child.

Infoxchange

Infoxchange is a not-for-profit, social enterprise that has delivered creative technological products and services to tackle social challenges within the community for over 25 years. The organisation strives to solve family violence, homelessness, mental health and issues facing people with disabilities, the elderly, Aboriginal, Maori and Pasifika communities through smart and efficient technology. These tools range from nation-wide service coordination systems to IT advice for individual organisations, including the interactive mobile information tool ‘Ask Izzy’.

The NAB Foundation’s thrive grant, is supporting the enhancement of the ‘Ask Izzy’ app (an interactive mobile information tool), which seeks to connect people experiencing or that have experienced domestic and family violence with essential services. The app will be co-designed with people who have experienced domestic violence, homelessness and the services sector. With a listing of over 350,000 services , including information on housing, money help, health, support and counselling across Australia in urban, regional, rural and remote locations. The enhancement will ensure that ‘Ask Izzy’ meets the needs of people experiencing family violence – that it is safe, relevant and accurate.

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne strives to be a public-spirited institution, ranked among the finest universities in the world. It seeks to harness strength, breadth and depth of research to help meet global challenges and attract the brightest cohort from the widest range of backgrounds, offering an outstanding student experience. The University makes research, student learning and engagement serve public interests, this includes taking up pressing societal problems in research, producing graduates prepared for responsibility and promoting inquiry and open debate based on evidence and reason.

The NAB Foundation’s seed grant is supporting the University of Melbourne to refine and test a world-first, evidence-based smartphone tool for men who have used violence in their intimate relationships. The tool, which is based on pilot work with men and health practitioners aims to intervene early by raising awareness of abusive behaviours and encouraging self-reflection and help-seeking before violence escalates.

Two Good Co

Two Good Co believe that every woman and child is worthy of love and respect. This is demonstrated by providing free, restaurant-quality meals to domestic violence safe houses across Sydney and Melbourne. Two Good Co is a buy-one, give-one social enterprise serving organic meals designed by some of Australia’s best chefs. For every Two Good Co meal purchased, one is delivered to a woman in a domestic violence shelter in Australia. They also employ women from the refuges they serve and provide them with culinary training with the aim to promote self-worth. Since Two Good was launched in 2015, more than 20,000 meals have been delivered to people in need.

The NAB Foundation is supporting Two Good Co by providing a seed grant to assist them in building capacity through a new IT platform to automate processes and keep users informed of services available for domestic violence victims.

Financial Shocks

Women’s Information Referral Exchange (WIRE)

WIRE’s mission is to build a society in which women are safe, respected, valued, informed, empowered and free to make genuine choices. They are the only state-wide women’s service that provides information, referral and confidential support to all Victorian women regardless of the issues they face. They offer a range of training programs for women in an environment that is free of exploitation and discrimination. The organisation researches and advocates on issues impacting women including financial literacy and economic security, gender equity and violence against women.

The NAB Foundation’s thrive grant will support the development of a national toolkit and online companion resource to educate and inform financial and community services providers. The toolkit will build capacity in the financial and community service sector by increasing sector knowledge around building women’s financial resilience, provide the necessary resources to the professionals working with women around financial decision making, create the buy-in to achieve individual and organisational behavioural change and enable women to access the support they need to improve their short, medium and long term financial security.

Environmental Wellbeing Sustainable Regions

Australian Land Conservation Alliance (Australia wide)

With many of Australia’s most threatened plants and animals living on private land, the role of private landholders and land trusts are crucial to conservation efforts. This three year, thrive grant will support a significant scaling up of the Australian Land Conservation Alliance from an unincorporated alliance to a stand-alone entity that leads a network of most of Australia’s major private land conservation organisations enabling greater collective impact on national conservation issues.

Australian Wildlife Conservancy (Kimberley, WA)

Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) is Australia’s largest owner of private land for conservation, managing more than four million hectares of land, protecting some of the largest remaining populations of many endangered species. This project trials an innovative idea – a joint venture between the not-for-profit sector (AWC) and an indigenous organisation (Dambimangari Aboriginal Corporation) to deliver, in an integrated way, improved conservation and socio-economic outcomes. The initiative, which NAB will support for three years, with a seed grant, will see joint-management of nearly 800,000 hectares along the Kimberley Coast in Western Australia an area of international significance and the only section of mainland Australia to have suffered no extinctions. This unique model will provide a model for use throughout Australia.

ReefRestoration Foundation(Fitzroy Island, Great Barrier Reef, QLD)

The Reef Restoration Foundation (RRF) were the first organisation granted a permit by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, establishing a pilot offshore coral nursery in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park at Fitzroy Island, Cairns in December 2017. This innovative nursery and reef restoration pilot has been developed to accelerate the recovery and strengthen the resilience of high value coral reefs to future bleaching events by collecting corals that are naturally more tolerant to higher water temperatures and growing them on offshore nursery frames. This innovative process mimics nature and is similar to taking cuttings from healthy plants to create new plants. This method is used in the Florida Keys and Caribbean where over 25,000 corals are grown and planted per year. A three year, seed grant will provide RRF, a new not-for-profit social enterprise, to help it achieve its aspiration to grow and plant similar amounts of coral in high value locations throughout the Great Barrier Reef.

Terrain NRM(Great Barrier Reef, QLD)

This project in partnership between Terrain NRM, a not-for-profit working in the Wet Tropics to promote sustainable use of land and waterways, and GreenCollar, a leading environmental markets developer, will support landholders to improve water quality and health of the Great Barrier Reef though Reef Credits, the first reef water quality environmental market in Australia. Reef Credits place a monetary value on water quality improvements to drive on-ground action. This new approach is designed to engage a new source of reef investment, providing farmers with greater surety, and ability to plan for long-term improvements. Two year funding with a NAB Foundation seed grant will enable the employment of a Reef Credits Engagement Officer to accelerate community uptake.

The Nature Conservancy(Yorke Peninsula, SA)

The Nature Conservancy is a respected conservation organisation well known for developing commercial models to generate funding for conservation and restoring landscapes to underpin sustainable economic development. The Windara Reef Project, started in 2016, is rebuilding 20 hectares of lost oyster reefs (Australia’s most endangered marine ecosystem) in Gulf St Vincent, South Australia. The reef will improve local water quality, bolster and diversify the struggling aquaculture industry, sustain primary production, and create new regional jobs in science and technology, construction, fishing and tourism. This one-year, thrive grant will help complete construction of the reef thereby providing a proven model for national reef restoration throughout Australia.

Odonata (Victoria)

The NAB Foundation’s year-long, seed grant will support the establishment and growth of Odonata, a not-for-profit social enterprise, by supporting core operations enabling them to scale their environmental and social impact and demonstrate the benefits of doing business with biodiversity. Overtime, Odonata seeks to develop commercial agriculture models that integrate biodiversity as core production system. The project will build the capability of understanding and the integration of biodiversity into farming practices and production.

Governance and management

The NAB Foundation is a Private Charitable Trust established in 2008 under its previous name, MLC Community Foundation. Changing to the NAB Foundation in 2016 reflects the whole of the NAB Group’s support of the Foundation and we continue the legacy of providing vital funding, awareness and advocacy support to social purpose organisations.

The NAB Foundation is governed by AET Services Ltd. The Foundation’s management team - Lucy Doyle, NAB Foundation Manager and Elyse Cook, NAB Foundation Analyst, are part of NAB’s Corporate Responsibility team and are accountable to the Trustee for delivering on all operational matters and execution of strategies and programs.

History

The NAB Foundation began as part of the MLC business, which has a long standing and established commitment to supporting the communities in which their people live and work. From 2000 to 2008, MLC's People and Community Trust (known as Pact) supported programs and initiatives that were designed to make a lasting difference to the community. This was achieved by providing opportunities for their employees to be involved in, to enrich both their lives and the lives of others.

The name 'Pact' signified the commitment that was made between employees, MLC and the community and a charter was developed that had input by a cross section of employees.

In September 2008, the MLC Community Foundation was established as a Private Charitable Trust overseen by a Trustee and registered with the Australian Taxation Office. This marked a real commitment to securing a long term, sustainable pool of funds with which to support the community. Just as MLC Community Foundation's name was chosen to represent and acknowledge the heritage of MLC, the transition to NAB Foundation in 2016 is a reflection of the whole organisation’s support behind the foundation.

Today, as a part of NAB’s broader corporate responsibility approach, we look to support the community organisations we work with beyond financial grants by drawing on the skills, expertise and resources from across the NAB Group. This is another important way we continue to reflect the foundation’s origins of employee engagement in the community.

NAB Foundation, ABN: 27 308 230 413

Previous grant recipients

The NAB Foundation under its previous name, MLC Community Foundation, is proud to have supported the following organisations in the work they do supporting and solving mental health.